“Richard Bradshaw, the British conductor who waged what he often called ‘the thirty years war’ to build an opera house in Toronto, died Wednesday evening of an apparent heart attack at Pearson airport after returning from a holiday with his wife in the Maritimes.”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
Why Elvis’s Dancing Still Captivates
“The inherent eroticism of dance — with all its sweaty bodies in any sort of motion — can shift from discreet to overt with even the subtlest of movements. But there was nothing subtle about Elvis Presley, whose death, 30 years ago today, has been widely commemorated this week. Those loose, jutting hips gave America in the mid-1950s enough eroticism via dance to stop and stare.”
Music Critic Alan Blyth Dies At 78
“Alan Blyth, the distinguished music critic, has died from cancer two weeks after his 78th birthday. A specialist on singers and singing, Blyth held trenchant views on the modern school of opera production, particularly those offering radical reinterpretations (‘misrepresentations’ might be Blyth’s word) of the classics.”
Ian Rankin’s Assertion About Women Revived, Reviled
“The Scottish crime writer Val McDermid has re-ignited a row about violence in detective fiction written by women. Speaking at the Edinburgh books festival, she attacked bestselling local author Ian Rankin for suggesting that ‘the people writing the most graphic violence today are women … they are mostly lesbians as well’. McDermid, who is a lesbian, rejected Rankin’s remarks – made in an interview with the Independent last year – as ‘arrant rubbish’.”
Female Crime Writers Are No Gorier Than The Guys
“Ian Rankin is talking a ‘wheen o’ blethers’ with his contention that women crime writers, and lesbians in particular, are more bloodthirsty than men. … Firstly, the notion that a malevolent coven of hardboiled dykes is threatening men’s supremacy over the genre, or polluting it with their hardcore imaginings, seems to me marginally paranoid.” But there is this, too: “Women are simply more used to living with fear than men.”
An Art Hedge Fund? Who Wants Safety In Art?
“The news that investors are seeking to speculate on the art market following the creation of a new art hedge fund, betting on an art movement or an individual artist’s rise in value without actually buying a painting, certainly appears to be an ominous idea. What exactly would it be they are planning to speculate on?”
What If We Took Away All The Ads In The City?
“Gilberto Kassab, the mayor of São Paulo, passed a law last year banning all advertising from the Brazilian city. The place is now being held up by activists worldwide as an example to us all: an image of an anti-Orwellian future, where The Man is no longer in control of our day to day choices. But does the planet’s first ‘clean city’ really live up to the hype?”
A Video Game May Rescue An Orphaned Instrument
Popular music has changed since the guitar’s heyday in the ’60s, and the instrument’s popularity isn’t helped by the decline of music education in the schools. But there is hope for the guitar, and it lies in a “technology launching rock stars across the land, one that most guitar players don’t even consider part of their world. I’m talking about ‘Guitar Hero,’ the ridiculously popular video game in which players use a plastic guitar-shaped controller to simulate rocking out.”
Jazz Adventurer Max Roach Dies At 83
“Max Roach, a founder of modern jazz who rewrote the rules of drumming in the 1940’s and spent the rest of his career breaking musical barriers and defying listeners’ expectations, died early today at his home in New York.”
Chicago “A Music City In Hiding,” Study Says
“A ground-breaking study sent to Mayor Richard Daley and city officials this week concludes that Chicago lags behind smaller cities in nurturing and profiting from its homegrown music community. Despite having one of the most lucrative and vibrant music scenes in North America, the University of Chicago study describes Chicago as ‘a music city in hiding.'”